Fire alarms have been a feature on NYC streets since the late 1800s, and methods of marking them, first to passing horse-drawn coaches and pedestrians up to moving vehicles has…

ForgottenFan Nathaniel Sasson sent me a conundrum, a chiseled sign on Prospect Southwest at its northwest corner with Reeve Place. At first, I thought this was a former street name,…

ForgottenFan Allan Rosen checks in with a long-outdated sign in Brighton Beach. “The B21 last ran on December 11, 1978, over 40 years ago, but this sign remained on Brighton…

The former Holland Hotel, with its circular corner turret, looks much the same today as it did when it was built in 1904, a Renaissance-inspired building designed by architect Charles…

150 Charles Street, finished in 2016, contains some of the most expensive apartments in the city, where penthouses can sell for nearly $35 million. It’s also a celebrity magnet, with…

Flushing’s boom began in the 1980s, when the relatively sleepy intersection, Roosevelt Avenue and Main Street and the surrounding streets were revitalized with an influx of immigrants from East Asia.…

I’ve gotten good response on Facebook for this photo I posted in early January 2019, so I thought I would do an FNY post and elaborate a bit. Fighting the…

Tool manufacturers have been moving away from New York City in recent years as rents rise. Tool and die makers produce jigs, fixtures, dies, molds, machine tools, cutting tools, gauges, and other tools used in manufacturing…

I’ve been checking some things out, as you may expect, on the 1940-era tax photos newly uploaded to the NYC Municipal Archives site. I’ve looked at the well-known buildings in Manhattan…

At Beverly and Bedford Avenues in Flatbush is this huge Art Moderne monolith that looks like something straight out of the 1936 movie Things to Come (the third section, where…

By BOB SINGLETON Executive Director, Greater Astoria Historical Society “Every picture tells a story,” sang Rod Stewart in 1971. With Long Island City it seems every building has a story…

Here’s a 1940 photograph of Grand Street looking east from West Broadway in SoHo. Naturally the first thing I noticed was the unusually curved lamppost on the corner. Why would…